As an online instructor, you will have to think about your credibility and brand image at some point. Here is how you can think about it seriously. Table of Content How to Safeguard the Credibility of Online Instructor? Increase your visibility in forums or Q&A sites. Guest post. Create case studies. What’s next? How to Safeguard the Credibility of Online Instructor? Your success as an online instructor hinges on whether or not your audience finds you credible enough to teach the topics in your course. Here’s the thing, no matter how effective and game-changing the ideas in your online course might be, all of it is going to be useless if you cannot convince your audience that you are a credible enough online instructor. After all, no one likes to gamble with their time and money, right? I mean, why would they even spend their money on buying your course, if they have no idea about your skill level or whether or not you can give them a satisfying enough solution to their needs, right? That’s how crucial establishing your credibility is if you’d like to become an online instructor. The good news is, while building your credibility might not be an easy task, the roadmap to making this happen is quite simple. And that’s what I’m going to share with you today. If you’re looking to establish your credibility as an online instructor, then this guide is for you. Let’s hop right in. Increase your visibility in forums or Q&A sites. This game plan is designed to get your audience to trust you even if it’s the first time they’ve seen or heard about you. Here’s the scenario that we’re trying to imagine. Let’s say someone is looking for tips on how to earn online through publishing ebooks. They’ll then visit the forums and Q&A sites to start a thread, or to ask a question (or to look for existing threads that can answer their question). Since you’re *already* on the platform and they can see your answers, they’ll be interested in learning more about you. They’ll then click your profile to have a better understanding of what your expertise is. Also, it’s quite common for forums or Q&A sites to show the threads that you’ve started, the comments or answers that you shared, etc… When they visit the other threads that you’ve been commenting on and see how value-packed your ideas are, they won’t have second thoughts about trusting you since you clearly know what you’re doing. When they see what kind of “Karma,” upvotes, or the connections you have on your profile, they can easily be convinced of how trustworthy you are. Of course, when they see your website and see the courses that you’ve published as an online instructor, making the decision to buy becomes a lot easier for them because they already trust you. Also there are some mistakes that will ruin the career of online instructors. Guest post. Imagine being an online instructor that specializes in Search Engine Optimization. How do you think your target audience would feel if they find out that you are a contributor to sites like Moz.com, Hubspot.com, or SearchEngineJournal.com (and other sites of the same caliber)? Can you imagine their trust-o-meter shooting off the roof? I mean, how can your audience not trust you if the editors of the hard-hitting sites approve of your ideas to the point of them allowing you to share it with their audience, right? Another benefit of guest posting is the fact that they can read your content and the kind of ideas that you’re sharing. This gives them an idea of how knowledgeable you are in your craft. Think of your guest posts as your appetizers for your audience. If they love it, they’ll be more than happy to devour the main course (the actual course that you are selling) that you’re going to offer. If you aren’t quite familiar with how to start guesting posting, then allow me to share with you the gist of how the process works: Compile a list of high-quality sites that are relevant to your industry. Check out each site’s editorial guidelines then pitch their editors accordingly. Once their editors accept your article ideas, you can then start writing the article based on how you and the editor agreed it to be written. Send the article to the editor. If they accept your content, then they’ll tell you when your article is going live. If there are edits that they’d like to be made, then just do the edits until they accept your article. The process is quite easy to follow, isn’t it? What isn’t easy however is executing the steps. It requires perseverance and mental grit. Once you start working on the process, you’ll realize that some of the steps are quite boring. You’ll also notice how most of the webmasters/editors that you’ll send your pitches to will outright ignore you. Don’t let these challenges get to you. Just continue doing what you’re doing (while trying to improve your steps as much as you can), and you’ll surely get results. There are certain things that are preventing you from succeeding as an online instructor. Create case studies. When you mix testimonials, data-backed how-to articles, and success stories, what you’ll most likely end up having are case studies. Pretty amazing, huh? That’s why most companies pay premium rates to writers for case studies since it can get the job done. Whether you want more customers, brand recognition, leads, or just to solidify your brand as an authority in the industry, publishing case studies can almost always help you with just that. If small or big businesses are using it, then why shouldn’t you? You can publish case studies on your website where you talk about the problems of one of your customers, then talk about how they used your course, the steps that they took to solve their challenges, and the kind of amazing results that they’ve gotten. When your audience reads your case studies, they can easily imagine themselves to be your client (the one in the case study) since they can pretty much relate to the problems. At that point, since your course was the one that helped your client achieve success, it gives more weight to how credible you are as an instructor. When your audience reads your case studies, they can easily imagine themselves to be your client (the one in the case study) since they can pretty much relate to the problems. At that point, since your course was the one that helped your client achieve success, it gives more weight to how credible you are as an online teacher. What’s next? What are some of the tips that you can share with other online instructor to help them establish their credibility online? Here are some tips for online instructors. Was there a silver bullet strategy that helped you achieve the level of trustworthiness that you have achieved? Please share your ideas in the comments section below. Cheers!
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